I should add that this time we stayed a night at l’Arnsbourg’s new hotel: Hotel K. It was completely lovely. Very comfortable, good beds, peaceful environment and marvellous baths. Also, on my third visit to l’Arnsbourg I once again had the best meal of my life; they just go from strength to strength.

When visiting Strasbourg for a night we decided to visit this restaurant as it had got good reviews and sounded like they were making interesting food. Indeed, they had recently been awarded a Michelin star, how could we go wrong?

The first suggestion that we could go wrong occurred when we pulled up outside in the taxi: The restaurant was hideous, Every wall was painted a different colour, lovely combinations of orange, grey and brown screamed out through the windows. We walked in and things only got worse: they had an incredibly tasteless ceiling duvet hanging from the roof and the vile walls were adorned with livid red 3D pictures. A veritable Australian’s nightmare.

As Daniel was reading the wine list I asked him to wipe the look of horror from his face. He suggested that I look at it instead; seconds later he was telling me not to look so appalled. It was a shameful selection of wines for a restaurant in a great wine region. There was virtually no Riesling one would want to drink and we agreed there was only one red wine we could possibly choose.

The menu promised ‘contemporary cooking’ and we chose a five course, Euro68 menu which we hoped would get us back in the mood. We were to be not only disappointed by it but also personally offended.

The amuse bouche they offered us was a ravioli of ceps and foie gras in a cep broth. The pasta had clearly been cooking all day so limp and flaccid was it, with a watery, flavourless filling and the broth it was in was thin and totally lacking flavour. Oh dear.

The first proper course had sounded like an interesting take on foie gras, a maki roll of foie. This consisted of a lump of foie gras wrapped in rice which had been pan-fried sitting in some iced turnip water. The foie was nice enough, but the fried rice was pointless and the turnip water completely vile. “Why?” was all I could repeat on trying to choke this filth down.

We then moved onto sole with mussels, puy lentils and a mousse of what looked (and I dare say tasted) like grilled baby vomit on top of it. The sole managed to be both over-cooked and distinctly chewy and the mussels were tinned pieces of awfulness. The lentils were at least properly cooked, but again they were sitting in a watery, characterless broth. We shall pass over the grilled baby vomit mousse as this defied description, although Daniel dimly remembers having something similar, but far tastier, in a Findus frozen fish gratin, in his youth.

We chose two different main courses. I had venison with a little bolognaise of meat sitting by it. The venison was lacking any form of flavour that might have made it nice. The bolognaise reminded me of an ex-girlfriend’s breath; she used to eat tinned cat food. Daniel had roast lamb that was tough, over-cooked and tasted of wool. With this came some play-dough-like gnocchi and, can you believe it, two edible things: a slice of lamb sausage and some choucroute with fennel. Two swallows do not a summer make, alas.

The first three courses had been actively unpleasant, so it was almost a relief to have a cheese course which was merely boring, if weird. Some brie sprinkled with truffle powder and wrapped in a thin sheet of pasta. With this waste of decent brie it meant that Serge et Co. had managed to turn France’s three great treasures, wine, cooking and cheese, into shameful parodies.

The feeling of depression over our corner of the restaurant was now very deep, so we almost perked up when desserts came and they had ideas. Alas, the ideas turned out to be as hollow as Serge’s cooking was nauseating. Daniel had a smoking cigar of chocolate with a vanilla cream filling served in a cigar ash-tray with vanilla and berry sauce to dip it in. It was shit. David had ‘frites’ of battered pineapple with some unidentifiable white foam to dip it in and a little toothpaste tube of red fruit ketchup. The ketchup was flavourless, the white foam can only be thought of in terms of its texture, far too reminiscent of jizz, and the frites were simply big fingers of grease. After these horrors we were convinced that Serge Burckel was a talentless poseur who could only have got his star by dosing the Michelin inspector’s food with hallucinogenic drugs.

As you can tell, we didn’t enjoy this at all. From the terrible decor, via the embarassingly poor wine list to the frankly horrible food this was a catalogue of shame. The only redeeming feature of the place is that the taxi they called us got there quickly, allowing us to leave this travesty of a restaurant behind us; but they can hardly be applauded for a taxi’s promptness. We were truly amazed that the place not only had other clients, but was full; are the denizens of Strasbourg so keen to try novel cooking they are willing to put up with it being dire?

We are not going to give contact details for this restaurant as we would not even want our worst enemy to visit this horrible, horrible, temple of awfulness.

Daniel with his chocolate cigar:

David’s greasy frites:

They had four set menus on offer, the most expensive of which was an inexpensive 60€. We chose a 45€ menu, which seemed to offer reasonable entertainment for the money.

We started off with three amuses bouches: a mousse of beetroot and some kind of fish, this was completely delicious, the fish was really tasty, not over-cooked at all. This came with a carpaccio of sea-bass with pistachios, which was a tad fishy but perfectly acceptable. The final amuse bouches was a soup of pumpkin, quite lovely. These all really perked me up and set me in the mood for an excellent meal.

The starters were great. I had some truly lovely foie gras with an apple sorbet and a cinnamon poached pear. This was brilliant, the parts all worked in harmony and were of excellent quality. The partner had some perfectly cooked scallops in a creamy mussel froth with some lovely root vegetable frites. The quality of these starters was very high for the price we were paying.

We all chose fillet of local beef for our main courses. It was perfectly aged and cooked as little as we asked for. It came with excellent mushrooms that were full of flavour and a little bowl of mashed potato and pumpkin velouté, which I could take or leave but everyone else liked. Again these were excellent quality for the price.

We had a white chocolate mousse with very rich dark chocolate sauce for dessert. The sauce was very powerful, and the mousse quite delicate, they matched perfectly. The chocolate was served with a passion fruit and mango sorbet, which was quite refreshing. They also brought out some green and orange lollipops with this that were hilarious but a bit too sweet to finish.

The menu was very well-balanced and in command of seasonal variation. And, it has to be said, a complete bargain. The wine list was very well chosen and had perfectly reasonable mark-ups. Finishing off with a huge bumper of green Chartreuse really put a smile on my face. An excellent meal that didn’t break the bank and left us all with a warm glow of satisfaction. The best place to eat in the Pas-de-Calais, without a doubt.

Restaurant Le Buffet, 22 rue de la Gare, Lieu-dit Molinghem, 62330 Isbergues. Tel: +33 (0)3 21 25 82 40 http://www.le-buffet.com/

The food was totally, stomach-churningly, soul-meltingly vile. I can hardly bring myself to think about it again so utterly nauseating was it. I’ve had many nasty experiences in my life and this will be a memorably disgusting one.

I ordered a Supreme Cheese burger, that was wet, with meat that tasted vaguely of piss and cheese that stretches the definition of cheese to beyond breaking point. The bits of fried cheese they offered as a seasonal special were too vomit-inducing to eat more than the smallest mouthful one could foolishly ingest. They had ‘rustic frites’ as another special. These were slightly raw in the middle but tasted only of burnt potato skin. They, too, buggered the imagination as far as horribleness was concerned.

What I shall euphemistically call ‘the meal’ was a ranking depressing experience in recent years. To be honest, even the three day old wet sandwiches served up in the Woolwich loony bin have more claim to be edible than this shit. I felt personally offended by the total crap they had the gaul (ha!) to charge us money for. It was completely inedible. No, it was worse than that, it was the contents of the seventh circle of culinary hell. I’ve had more enjoyable kicks to the testicles than this offensive shite. Never, ever again. No way. Not on your nelly. Death is too good for the designers of the Quick menu, as far as I am concerned. Way below sub-interest, to be a bit briefer.